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We invented wheels and compasses and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and the eames lounge chair and penicillin and e = mc2 and beer that comes in six-packs and guns and dildos and the Pet Rock and Doggles (eyewear for dogs) and square watermelons. One small step for man. We came up with the Lindy Hop and musical toothbrushes and mustard gas and glow-in-the-dark Band-Aids and paper and the microscope and baconfucking bacon!and Christmas. Ma-ma-se, ma-ma-sa, ma-ma-ko-ssa. We went to the bottom of the ocean and into orbit. We sucked energy from the sun and fertilizer from the air. Let there be light. We created the most amazing pink flamingo lawn ornaments that come in packs of two and only cost $9.99!

In a universe that stretches an estimated 93 billion light-years in diameter with 700 quintillion (7 followed by 20 zeros) planetshere, on this tiny little blue dot we call Earth, one of us created a tool called a spork. The most astounding part is that while that same universe is an estimated 26.7 billion years old, we did everything in just under 6,000 years.

All of this in less than 200 generations of human life.

Now weve just created a new machine that is made of billions of microscopic transistors and aluminum and copper wires that zigzag and twist and turn and are interconnected in incomprehensible ways. A machine that is only a few centimeters in width and length.

A little tiny machine that may end up being the last invention humans ever create.

This all stems from an idea conceptualized in the 1940s and finally figured out a few years ago. That could solve all of the worlds problems or destroy every single human on the planet in the snap of a fingeror both. Machines that will potentially answer all of our unanswerable questions: Are we alone in the universe? What is consciousness? Why are we here? Thinking machines that could cure cancer and allow us to live until were 150 years old. Maybe even 200. Machines that, some estimate, could take over up to 30 percent of all jobs within the next decade, from stock traders to truck drivers to accountants and telemarketers, lawyers, bookkeepers, and all things creative: actors, writers, musicians, painters. Something that will go to war for usand likely against us.

Artificial intelligence.

Thinking machines that are being built in a 50-square-mile speck of dirt we call Silicon Valley by a few hundred men (and a handful of women) who write in a language only they and computers can speak. And whether we understand what it is they are doing or not, we are largely left to the whims of their creation. We dont have a say in the ethics behind their invention. We dont have a say over whether it should even exist in the first place. Were creating God, one AI engineer working on large language models (LLMs) recently told me. Were creating conscious machines.

Already, weve seen creative AIs that can paint and draw in any style imaginable in mere seconds. LLMs can write stories in the style of Ernest Hemingway or Bugs Bunny or the King James Bible while youre drunk with peanut butter stuck in your mouth. Platforms that can construct haikus or help finish a novel or write a screenplay. Weve got customizable porn, where you can pick a womans breast size or sexual position in any settingincluding with you. Theres voice AI software that can take just a few seconds of anyones voice and completely re-create an almost indistinguishable replica of them saying something new. Theres AI that can re-create music by your favorite musician. Dont believe me? Go and listen to Not Johnny Cash singing Barbie Girl, Freddie Mercury intoning Thriller, or Frank Sinatra bellowing Livin on a Prayer to see just how terrifying all of this is.

Then theres the new drug discovery. People using AI therapists instead of humans. Others are uploading voicemails from loved ones who have died so they can continue to interact with them by talking to an AI replica of a dead parent or child. There are AI dating apps (yes, you date an AI partner). Its being used for misinformation in politics already, creating deepfake videos and fake audio recordings. The US military is exploring using AI in warfareand could eventually create autonomous killer robots. (Nothing to worry about here!) People are discussing using AI to create entirely new species of animals (yes, thats real) or viruses (also real). Or exploring human characteristics, such as creating a breed of super soldiers who are stronger and have less empathy, all through AI-based genetic engineering.

And weve adopted all of these technologies with staggering speedmost of which have been realized in just under six months.

It excites me and worries me in equal proportions. The upsides for this are enormous, maybe these systems find cures for diseases, and solutions to problems like poverty and climate change, and those are enormous upsides, said David Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and neural science at NYU. The downsides are humans that are displaced from leading the way, or in the worst case, extinguished entirely, [which] is terrifying. As one highly researched economist report circulated last month noted, There is a more than 50-50 chance AI will wipe out all of humanity by the middle of the century. Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicts a 50 percent chance of demise within the next 100 years. Others dont put our chances so low. In July, a group of researchers, including experts in nuclear war, bioweapons, AI, and extinction, and a group of superforecastersgeneral-purpose prognosticatorsdid their own math. The experts deduced that there was a 20 percent chance of a catastrophe by 2100 and a 6 percent chance of an extinction-like event from AI, while the superforecasters had a more positive augury of a 9 percent chance of catastrophe and only 1 percent chance wed be wiped off the planet.

It feels a little like picking the extinction lottery numbersand even with a 1 percent chance, perhaps we should be asking ourselves if this new invention is worth the risk. Yet the question circulating around Silicon Valley isnt if such a scenario is worth it, even with a 1 percent chance of annihilation, but rather, if it is really such a bad thing if we build a machine that changes human life as we know it.

Larry Page is not an intimidating-looking man. When he speaks, his voice is so soft and raspy from a vocal cord injury, it sounds like a campfire that is trying to tell you something. The last time I shook his hand, many, many years ago, it felt as soft as a bar of soap. While his industry peers, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, are often performing public somersaults with pom-poms for attention, Page, who cofounded Google and is on the board of Alphabet, hasnt done a single public interview since 2015, when he was onstage at a conference. In 2018, when Page was called before the Senate Intelligence Committee to address Russian election meddling, online privacy, and political bias on tech platforms, his chair sat empty as senators grilled his counterparts.

While Page stays out of the limelight, he still enjoys attending dinners and waxing poetic about technology and philosophy. A few years ago a friend found himself seated next to Page at one such dinner, and he relayed a story to me: Page was talking about the progression of technology and how it was inevitable that humans would eventually create superintelligent machines, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), which are computers that are smarter than humans, and in Pages view, once that happened, those machines would quickly find no use for us humans, and they would simply get rid of us.

What do you mean, get rid of us? my friend asked Page.

Like a sci-fi writer delivering a pitch for their new apocalyptic story idea, Page explained that these robots would become far superior to us very quickly, and if we were no longer needed on earth and thats the natural order of thingsand I quoteits just the next step in evolution. At first my friend assumed Page was joking. Im serious, said Page. When my friend argued that this was a really fucked up way of thinking about the world, Page grew annoyed and accused him of being specist.

Over the years, Ive heard a few other people relay stories like this about Page. While being interviewed on Fox News earlier this year, Musk was one of them. He explained that he used to be close with Page but they no longer talked after a debate in which Page called Musk specist too. My perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough, Musk said. He really seems to want digital superintelligence, basically digital God, if you will, as soon as possible.

All of the people LEADING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AI right now are COMPLETELY DISINGENUOUS in public.

Lets just stop for a moment and unpack this. Larry Pagethe founder of one of the worlds biggest companiesa company that employs thousands of engineers that are building artificial intelligence machines right now, as you read thisbelieves that AI will, and should, become so smart and so powerful and so formidable andandthat one day it wont need us dumb pathetic little humans anymoreand it will, and it should, GET RID OF US!

See the article here:

Artificial Intelligence May Be Humanity's Most Ingenious Invention ... - Vanity Fair